Setting of the Magnificat – Sheet Music

In the hymn of praise in the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”), in St Luke’s Gospel Mary responds to the Annunciation of the Archangel that she is to bear the son of God. That is why Magnificat settings, mainly joyful in character, are associated liturgically with Christmas time and sometimes also include Christmas interludes. Over the centuries, numerous settings have been composed as part of the liturgy – in the Baroque period by composers such as J. S. Bach, Charpentier, Durante, Graupner, Monteverdi, Schütz, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Zelenka, and later on by C. P. E. Bach, Homilius, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. Of the various recent settings, Bobbi Fischer’s Magnificat is an outstanding work, characterized by Afro-Caribbean rhythms.